There are so many artists now that the competition within the world of reborning is quite fierce. You will need to make the decision early on if you want to go higher scale, or are happy with the mid range prices that these reborn dolls fetch. Also finding a niche in the market will mean the difference for you between competing for a sale or having your babies very much in demand, this can be complex, and with another artform you will need to think it through and put in the hard work required to build your name and reputation. The hard work of course will mainly consist of your ability and focus in bringing these reborn babies to life, the attention to detail is paramount even down to the final clothing you put them in and photographs taken for your auction listing. Taking a marketers approach to selling is essential for completing the process with a succesful outcome you are happy with. Focussing on keywords that may not pertain to reborn dolls necessarily, but perhaps draw in a new market that otherwise may not stumble across the world of Reborning. Taking risks and going out on a limb may just pay off when you end up with more bidders from a variety of sources all vying for your baby.

Selling reborns is a competitive business, those who have done the hard yards and built a reputation will quite often have enough demand to be able to sell their reborns for the big dollars with minimal marketing effort. This is however, aimed at those of you who aren’t happy with the results you are seeing with your reborns at auction. Take time with your work, consider every tiny detail, simple is effective, keeping marks and blushing to a minimum will bring a fair more realistic look than those with the ‘doll’ look, while all artists are going to be defensive of their work, sometimes it is important to gain a realistic opinion, that can then help further you as an artist with a little constructive criticism. This doesn’t need to be harsh but sometimes with just a little bit of an honest approach to your work, you can gain the experience and techniques to perfect your babies, and give them a lifelike look that will be sought after. Its all about taking a stand as and artist, if thats what you want to be seen as and creating the best reborn you can. Once you have perfected the true baby look, stay focussed and try not to be downhearted when things don’t immediately pick up, it’s all about timing and marketing, a quality product correctly marketed cannot fail, so if you are serious about being a reborn artist with the high priced babies, take a good look at your reborning from start to finish, the whole process, and give yourself an accurate and realistic examination of what you are doing. This is only for those who want to see change, if you are already happy with where your reborning is at you will have no need for change, just keep on creating those beautiful little babies and sharing them with us on Front Porch.

There has been so much talk lately of reborns not selling, while we are aware there are artists selling their work, for those not making the money they require to turn a profit you may need to think more strategically. Think about what is selling at the moment, pettiskirts are big with Mothers buying them for their daughters, who would quite possibly also love a little lifelike baby of their own. Get yourself a newborn pettiskirt, we can tell you where, and put it on your doll, then add that to the title or subtitle. While you sell these dolls as collectors items, what happens to their hair or even them is really up to the buyer anyway, a collector could possibly allow them to collect dust, a little girl could love them to death, what happens beyond your sale is somewhat irrelevant. Another suggestion would be to add a smocked or cutwork dress to the listing, and of course add these keywords in your title, instead of having so much detail about your Nursery name, abbreviate it, so say Lullaby Cove, to save header space maybe just L C or L Cove, rarely are your nursery names going to be searched, most buyers would go for reborn, reborn and reborn baby are the most popular words searched for this market, we know, we’ve done our research long before starting out to make sure we maximise the amount of people hitting our site everyday so we can get your babies noticed on a larger scale. Think about adding your listing to different areas, maybe another listing in baby clothing, somewhere perhaps someone who doesn’t even know reborns exist (and there are plenty of them) can stumble across your baby and fall in love. And most importantly, use your forums! everywhere you can add your auction link do it, one more buyer can mean a big difference in your sale price. Keep checking back with our blog, we’ll try to add more ways you can maximise your final sale $$ over the next few weeks.

With our new look forum we now have a babies for sale area, this is specifically for finished reborns that are for sale either privately or on ebay or other auction sites. This area will enable you to post details of your finished baby with contact details and even a link to your site or auction. By adding your auction details to the area, and finding even one possible bidder via Front Porch Babies can mean a substantial difference in your end auction price, as there is no risk, no charges or fees with us, it is well worth taking the extra time to list your babies with us. With Front Porch Babies climbing the google rankings the chances of finding more buyers to showcase your work to will only increase with time, so get in now and be a foundation member so you can at some stage be one of the original Front Porchers.

You can at any time contact us via admin@frontporchbabies.com if you would like to donate an item for a prize draw, anything to do with reborning, you can even suggest the competition idea. For the duration of the competition we will give you homepage advertising and of course regularly post links to your work on our facebook wall. It could be a reborning lesson, a percent off purchases in your store, anything at all to do with reborning. Sharing your skills with other reborners and getting your work noticed on Front Porch Babies is an effective way to build your business name with reborners which will inevitably lead to more work and success for you.

With so much going on behind the scenes at Front Porch Babies, the forum was getting a little left behind in the to do list. Because of this we welcome our new Moderator Carrey Simons from Angel Orphanage to the Front Porch Babies team. Carrey will be there to assist you with any queries and answer your questions as well as maintain an informative forum that will benefit all. Feel free to add your thoughts, tips and items for sale in our forum areas, the forum is there for you, so we hope you will use it to further your talents and be a part of friendly discussions with other reborners. We will also be adding a warning area, specifically so unethical sellers can be held accountable for their actions, if you have had a problem with a seller, poor quality items, or outright ripping off, please post the details to warn others. This sort of communication is imperative when there are so many suppliers out there. We will also add a recommended area, so if you deal with someone who is especially wonderful, they can be given the recognition they so deserve.

We now have Marketplace up and running on the site, with limited spots available, get in now and email us your nursery details so we can add you, good spots still available and as traffic to the site increases this will no doubt be of some value promoting your work. Homepage spots are still a low cost for an ad with maximum traffic on our most visited page. Any of you wanting to donate items for prizes will also be able to have your ad on the homepage for the duration of the competition, just email us at admin@frontporchbabies.com with any queries. We are very focussed on getting maximum traffic to our site to benefit all of you with promoting your work, either reborning or to do with reborning, the more people know about Front Porch Babies the more chance you will have of fee free private sales.

A big hello to all Front Porchers, we are so thankful to all of you for joining us and inviting your friends. As our facebook fanlist grows we have been thinking about a way of celebrating our 1000 fanmark, and we came up with the idea of having 15 prize draws over 15 hours, hopefully this will include varied timezones but also give you all a good chance to win something. The competition will be about reborning general knowledge, we will ask you a question, and the first one in with the correct answer wins. These questions could be about sculptors, kits, techniques, brands…anything! so get your general reborning knowledge working for you and win some awesome prizes, we’ll have kits, personalised items, front porch items and lots more. So keep inviting your friends to our facebook fanpage and celebrate 1000 with us when we get there.

Some reborners like to use purple when layering their reborns nailbed, others a blushing shade, it’s best to use what suits your babies skintone and gives an overall more authentic look. My best tip for adding the white tips is to ensure you add another layer or two of your nail colour over the top, no baby is born with a french manicure and this look in a lot of reborns is too stark and unnatural. When adding your tips, take a very fine brush and lightly sweep across the nail tip area, keep some toothpicks on hand to tidy any messy edges. Try to find a smudging brush, these can be purchased at most cosmetic outlet shops, they have a curved foam tip and will give you the ability to lightly brush in from the base side of the nail, giving it a natural looking curve. I find these eyeliner smudgers are the best thing to use for control and to get the curved definition in the nail tip.

August is almost over and it’s almost time to draw the winner of our beautiful naming dress set from Treasured Heirlooms by Christine. We are so excited about where it could be possibly going! Winner will be announced onsite and also on our facebook page after midnight AEST tonight. Good luck to everyone, we intend on having alot more prize draws and will try to have one a month for subscribers only. If you haven’t already ‘liked’ our facebook page, take the time to do it, you can post links to your auctions anytime and show off your babies. Front Porch Babies will be going through some structural changes over the coming months to ensure we give you the best possible platform to not only learn more about the art of reborning but to also be connected with recommended suppliers, artists and services. So stay tuned, we have the best team possible working to make this the most interactive and productive site for reborners all over the world.

Well it’s the middle of the month, so close to drawing our winner for our naming dress competition. This will be done randomly by computer then the number will be matched to that subscriber. Thankyou to all who have signed up to Front Porch Babies, we appreciate you taking the time to join us and enter this fantastic competition. We are very excited about where this beautiful outfit could end up and hope to be able to contract Christine from Treasured Heirlooms to make something else for us to be able to give away. She makes some exquisite quilts with embroidery detail that would blow you away!!! It’s great to have her on board with us, and if any of you have anything you would like to donate for a prize draw we’d love to add a link to your site to our suppliers homepage.

Preparing your head for microrooting can be done a few ways, using rice in a sockette is effective, adding some dried lavender or a few drops of essential oil to the rice can dull the strong smell of the warmed rice, heat in a microwave for one minute, arrange inside the head and seal off with a small amount of stuffing. Another option is to use buckwheat or something similar to that used in wheat heat packs, again adding dried lavender or essential oil will give it a nicer aroma to work with when microrooting. Heat a large handful in a pyrex jug or similar and pour into the head, stuff the neck entrance as you would if using a rice sock, making sure you use enough to stop any wheat coming through. Both of these methods are recommended for easy needle insertion.

Artist’s will inevitably develop there own techniques over time, mottling is one technique that can be done a variety of ways. The berry maker brush is very popular, with light sponging can provide a mottled newborn look, though can also end up giving your baby a spotted appearance. One of the more popular techniques is to take a cosmetic wedge sponge, using the flat square side, gently pluck away small spots with tweezers, continuing to pluck around all four sides to get rid of any harsh edges, lightly dab a small amount of paint onto the sponge, then go over your baby lightly, don’t press too hard or you will get a more blended appearance. This is a very effective method of mottling both visually and and in cost.

When microrooting your reborns hair, some artists find it easier to follow a hair flow pattern, marking in the segments on their dolls head in a white tailors chalk or marker.  Using this method makes it an easier process for new reborners to adjust their technique and develop their own style of microrooting. Alternatively, it is still common practice to use the original crowning technique, this involves starting at the crown of the head and working in a circular motion out, replicating the pattern of a newborns hair. This way will require more concentration to ensure your lines are correct and even, if a beginner, you can end up with too much density or not enough in areas. Using a pattern and marking out your areas can help to give you a more even coverage and the marker is easily removed. Once happy with the overall appearance and coverage of your babies hair, you can wet it with water and wipe away any marker, then apply a light conditioning spray for hold and lustre.